News Archives

Thursday October 19, 2006

Key points:
* Neuren’s oral drug candidate NNZ-2591 has successfully reversed experimental memory loss, a common outcome associated with dementia and with many Parkinson’s disease patients
* This improvement was seen in both ordinary (non-aged) animals with induced memory loss and older (aged) animals, the latter indicated the reversal of aged related memory loss as well
* Previous preclinical data for oral NNZ-2591 has shown improvement in the motor effects associated with Parkinson’s
* NNZ-2591 now has preclinical evidence that it reverses both the motor effect and the memory loss effect associated with Parkinson’s disease
* There is currently only one drug approved for Parkinson disease dementia but none approved that treats both the motor and the dementia effects
* Neuren intends to accelerate development of NNZ-2591 as a clinical candidate for treatment of Parkinson’s disease dementia

Thursday October 19, 2006

More than a million Americans who suffer from the debilitating neurological disorder Parkinsons disease are likely to be among the first to benefit from promising advances in embryonic stem cell research, unless political controversy keeps slowing down the process, scientists said Monday.

Thursday October 19, 2006

Parkinsons disease affects an estimated one in every 500 people in Europe – it is the second most common disease after Alzheimers. With so many afflicted, one research team is trying to help people with Parkinson’s living at home to overcome the social exclusion its symptoms can cause.

Thursday October 19, 2006

Although Parkinson’s disease is most commonly viewed as a "movement disorder," scientists have found that the disease also causes widespread abnormalities in touch and vision Ð effects that have now been verified using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain. The new findings, by scientists at Emory University School of Medicine and Zhejiang University Medical School in Hangzhou China, will be presented on Oct. 17 at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta.

Thursday October 19, 2006

Former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner, who has battled Parkinson’s disease for 15 years, is recovering from two deep-brain surgeries and raring to get to work on education reform and a statewide "assisted death" initiative.

Thursday October 19, 2006

In a finding that contradicts current theories behind Parkinson’s disease, neuroscientists at Duke University Medical Center have discovered in mice that critical nerve cells fire all at the same time and thus overwhelm the brain’s ability to control the body’s movements.

Thursday October 19, 2006

Dopamine (DA) not only functions as a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger between neurons by which one neuron triggers another, researchers have found. It also appears to coordinate the activity of a particular neural circuitry. In studies with mice, they found evidence that the dopamine deficiency in Parkinson’s and other related movement disorders may cause loss of muscle control and paralysis due to disruption of coordinated activity in this circuit.

Thursday October 19, 2006

In some cases, patients taking a Parkinson’s drug called cabergoline may experience damage to heart valves, a study suggests. High cumulative doses of and long-term treatment with this drug are risk factors for the development of "valvulopathy," Japanese doctors report in the journal Neurology this month.